Our Mission of Gender Equity
or: the Importance of Supporting Marginalized Genders in Outdoor Pursuits
Welcome to the Summit Scholarship Foundation – now a certified 501(c)(3)! Since we obtained our non-profit status, we have been hard at work and are thrilled to announce our gender equity mission and vision to you. This direction has come from many hours of intensive work, learning, and thought on how to serve our community best. To all of you reading this, we thank you for your ongoing support.
The Summit Scholarship Foundation mission:
The Summit Scholarship Foundation 501(c)(3) exists to break down barriers to entry to the big mountain realm for women from all walks of life.
We empower women through adventure and contribute to gender equity on and off the mountain.
Our organization is keenly aware of the inequalities that function as barriers to entering the big mountain realm. Cost, experience, technical knowledge, representation, time off work, cultural barriers, discrimination, gear limitations, networking, confidence… the list goes on. The folks we support often face many or all of these challenges within an already intersectionally marginalized community or identity.
The approach we took to rework our mission focused on using an equity (versus equality) lens and developing a better understanding of what these terms mean to the communities we serve. As defined by UNESDOC (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), “Gender equity means fair treatment for all genders according to their individual needs. This may include equal treatment or treatment that is considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities”. We must address inequalities in the big mountain realm by recognizing the unique needs of marginalized communities in these spaces and providing the necessary resources to address those needs directly.
During our work, we talked at great lengths about the importance of gender equity – while equally recognizing the challenge of fulfilling that mission successfully. It’s one thing to say that gender equity is your goal and quite another to fulfill it through equitable actions for all marginalized genders. As an organization, we want to acknowledge and recognize our limitations both in knowledge and practicality in serving this mission. We’ll touch on that more below, but one thing was evident to all: gender equity must be the goal no matter the challenge. Being a catalyst for change in the big mountain realm and contributing to an equitable, safe community for all genders is where we lay our focus.
In discussing our limitations, we recognize that (at the time of writing) our team consists of 5 cis-women and only one trans, non-binary person. Three of the six identify as BIPOC, but we have no representation from the Black, Indigenous or Asian communities. We understand this is a limitation we currently face and pledge to be aware of this gap and how it could limit our efforts within our mission. During our gender equity-focused discussions, we consulted with our larger community (other non-binary and binary-trans folks) to add additional insights into our decision-making process and further our education. We fully intend on continuing best practices like this and look forward to welcoming an intersectional community to our team as it grows.
The other limitation we would like to address is our current capacity for gendered participation. At the time of writing, the partner organizations that we currently pair our scholarship recipients with are women-only (trans-inclusive) organizations. Other marginalized genders, such as trans men, non-binary people, Two-Spirit people, etc., are significantly disadvantaged in reaching big mountain goals. As our Foundation grows, we are excited to expand our scholarship recipient base to all marginalized genders to support our mission of gender equity fully. The Summit Scholarship Foundation recognizes and acknowledges that supporting women-only trips supports a cross-section of marginalized genders and therefore supports an equality goal versus our equity goal.
Within our mission discussions, we evaluated the possibility of opening the applicant pool to all marginalized genders in 2023. However, a primary concern is providing a safe and welcoming environment for all scholarship recipients—and, with proper time for vetting for partner organizations & guides, we can place recipients on trips that fulfill our equitable and safe requirements. Even within the community of just women, we acknowledge the gaps that exist due to intersectionality. For example, a white cis-woman will likely have a radically different experience on a mountain than a black trans-woman despite them both being women. It is important to us that we consider this when building out our program. While we work to find new partner organizations to support our marginalized gender family, we aim to fulfill our gender equity mission through interim actions. We will support other genders by partnering with mission-aligned and vetted organizations, welcoming them with access to our online resources and networking groups, giving them a voice on our platforms, and many other similar actions and efforts.
The Summit Scholarship Foundation team is excited about this new challenge and to work for an organization that creates real change in outdoor spaces. We all feel strongly that these spaces are some of the most empowering, uplifting, inspiring, and healing spaces around – and EVERYONE should have access to them and feel welcome in them. We thank you again for your support because we wouldn’t be able to fulfill our mission without you.
We are looking forward to another fantastic year coming up in 2023!
[For more information on how to support the Summit Scholarship Foundation for the upcoming season and beyond, please click here.]